The Crucible - Was the mass hysteria necessary?

Uploaded by sweetaugust314 on Dec 01, 2000

In The Crucible, there was a lot of senseless behavior. The purpose of The Crucible is to educate the reader on the insanity that can form in a group of people who think they are judging fairly upon a group of people. Judge Hawthorne believes what he is told by certain people is the truth even if little evidence is to be shown. The young girls with Abigail convince Hawthorne of others being witches so that Abigail can get what she wants, John Proctor, also so that Abigail does not blackmail the girls. The Crucible by Authur Miller investigates the effects of hysteria, superstitions and repression on the Salem Community in the late 1600’s.

Author Miller, 1915- was born in New York City and graduated from Abraham High School in Brooklyn, New York. Miller later went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan, 1938, where he received a prize for his play write. After college Miller joined the United States Army and fought in World War II. Miller also went through the great depression. Arthur Miller’s first play was written in 1944, he titled it “The Man who had All the Luck.”

The Crucible is a dramatization of the 17th-century Salem witch trials and a parable about the United States in the McCarthy era. It was written in 1953 and Miller received a Tony Award for this play write. Miller’s The Theater Essays (1971) is a collection of writings about the craft of play writes and the nature of modern tragedy. In his time he has written many others plays, he has also written a novel and a screenplay. His play writes are Death of a Sales Man, (Pulitzer Prize), is a tragic story of a salesman betrayed by his own hollow values and those of American society. In A View From the Bridge (1955; Pulitzer Prize) Miller studies a Sicilian-American longshoreman whose unacknowledged lust for his niece destroys him and his family. All My Sons (1947), Incident at Vichy (1965), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972), The Ride down Mount Morgan (1991), and Broken Glass (1994). His screenplay, The Misfits (1961); television dramas, Playing for Time (1980) and Clara (1991); His novel, Focus (1945); and a study of the Soviet Union, In Russia (1969), Arthur Miller’s last book written was his autobiography Time bends: A Life. (Kennedy Center) Arthur Miller’s The...